Pushing Boundaries | Michael Doherty at The Engine Room Gallery

Event Details

Opening Thursday 7 August at 7.00pm

This body of work explores the hand movements made during speech as a form of subconscious drawing. The series seeks to reconcile production in an abstract expressionist aesthetic with the desire to make work which contains and contributes to constructive narratives regarding cultural diversity and society. The work connects the artist’s definition of drawing as ‘to describe a path’ into the verbal field.

The work is initiated from hand movements taken from primary school Principal Mary Harbinson, describing ‘Different Journeys to the Same Place’, as an educational objective in the multi-cultural school. For other works the artist recorded his own hand movements as he described his consideration of the need to simultaneously respect and protect cultural diversity.

Michael Doherty paints in oils, in an expressive abstract aesthetic grounded in his drawing practice. His works are rooted in narratives around cultural diversity, society and the environment. While practicing as an architect he qualified from the Ulster University in 2023 with a First Class Honours degree in Fine Art. The boundaries of perceived surfaces, and places where line and surface meet, are critical in his approach to the resolution of his drawings and paintings.